Chapter 46 - Whispers from Palermo
The room fell into a deathly quiet, broken only by the steady hiss of the oxygen tank and the patter of rain against the lodge’s leaded windows.
Everything I had believed about the last five years disintegrated. I wasn't just an unlucky bystander caught in the crosshairs of an Italian crime war. I wasn't just a nanny who loved a child too much to let her go. I had been chosen from the very beginning to be the guardian of an empire—placed like a living lock between a dying mother’s fortune and the monsters who wanted to devour it.
"Why didn't you tell me at the airport?" I asked, my voice shaking with fury. "You had me pinned against a wall by armed men! You treated me like a criminal who snatched your daughter!"
"Because I didn't know if you were working for Antonio," Vincent replied brutally. "Dante had infiltrated my inner circle. My communications were tapped. If I had approached you with the truth, Antonio’s assassins would have intercepted you before you ever boarded the plane in Rome. I had to make it look like a hostile abduction to keep the Capos waiting."
"And Dante?"
"Dante believed Antonio promised him my seat," Vincent said, turning to Laurent. "Laurent, check the satellite phone. Has the drop box in Marseille been flagged?"
Laurent tapped his keyboard, his brow furrowing beneath his silver hair. "It’s worse than that. The Marseille vault was breached an hour ago by French federal agents acting on an Interpol red notice. Antonio leaked the location himself."
"Why would he do that?" I asked. "If the will is inside..."
"Because the will isn't in Marseille," Vincent said, his jaw tightening. "It was a diversion to draw my resources west. Antonio is already in Sicily. He knows we can't leave Europe by air or commercial sea. He's funneling us toward the only border he completely controls: the southern maritime corridor."
Suddenly, Maya let out a soft groan from the table.
I hurried to her side, smoothing back her dark hair. Her skin was cooler now, the fever beginning to recede under the medication, but her small face looked exhausted, etched with a weariness no five-year-old should ever carry.
"Mommy..." she whispered through the mask.
"I’m here, sweetie. I’m right here."
"I heard the man on the phone earlier," she said, her large brown eyes—so terrifyingly identical to Vincent’s—glistening with unshed tears. "The old man. He said I was bad for the family."
My heart tore into pieces. I leaned down and kissed her forehead, my tears wetting her cheek. "No, Maya. You are the best thing that ever happened to this world. That old man is a coward, and he’s afraid of you."
"Is Daddy going to fight him?"
Vincent walked over, his massive, scarred frame towering over the examination table. He bent down on one knee, bringing his eyes level with hers.
"Daddy is going to end him, Maya," Vincent said, his voice stripped of all hesitation. "No one touches you. Ever again."
May you like
He looked up at me, and for the first time, there was no master-and-servant barrier, no mob-boss arrogance in his gaze. There was only a desperate father looking at the mother of his child.
"We leave for Genoa at midnight," Vincent told me. "We don't run to South America. We go straight to Palermo."
